A case of “We can, therefore we must?”
Singapore Government Plan To Install Monitoring App on Student Computers Meets With Resistance From Privacy Groups, NGOs
In response to the school closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic last year, the government of Singapore is rolling out an initiative that aims to ensure all secondary school students in the country have a computer for home learning. However, these student computers will come packed with a potentially unwelcome addition: a monitoring app that allows teachers to view and control the screens remotely. And once the computers are distributed, students using their own devices will be required to install the monitoring app on them as well.
The plan has sparked backlash from various privacy groups and NGOs, Human Rights Watch among them. The monitoring app appears to extend beyond individual class sessions to allow instructors to look in on other aspects of what should be private devices, including search history. The proposed plan would monitor student computers for the viewing of “objectionable material” and it appears this would be done even outside of the context of the classroom.
Is anyone surprised?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/18/amazon-facebook-google-maryland-lawsuit-tax/
Silicon Valley-backed groups sue Maryland to kill country’s first-ever online advertising tax
The lawsuit from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and groups such as the Internet Association, whose members include Amazon, Facebook and Google, comes just a week after the state imposed the tax to help fund education
Following Facebook’s impact on Australia,
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/business/media/facebook-australia-news.html
Facebook’s New Look in Australia: News and Hospitals Out, Aliens Still In
The social network’s decision to block journalism rather than pay for it erased more than expected, leaving many outraged and debating what should happen next.
(Related) A little background.
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/2/17/paying-for-news
Paying for news
Newspaper revenue really started to collapse well over a decade ago, and we've been discussing what to do about it for almost as long.
None of the issues have changed much: newspapers had an oligopoly of attention and an oligopoly of a certain kind of advertising reach, and the internet removed both of these. People read many more things in many more places and advertisers have many more and better options, and so newspaper ad revenue is down by three quarters or more. Meanwhile, Google and Facebook created huge new ad businesses on the internet, that advertisers prefer, and some newspaper companies think that somehow or other they should get some of that money. That was the case in 2010 or even 2000, and it's the case now, except that the numbers got worse.
If one cares about these things, it's worth noting that a lot of Google and FB ad revenue doesn't actually come from things that used to be in newspapers: many of their advertisers are SMEs that rarely advertised before, while many actual newspaper advertisers moved to things that don't look like ads at all. The real estate agent that bought inserts now pays Zillow or Zoopla, and the soap company is paying Amazon for search placement (Amazon had close to $20bn in revenue from this in 2020, and perhaps more profit than AWS). Meanwhile, very little of the traffic on Google or Facebook comes from news, and very little advertising (and less with much value) appears next to news search results. Google didn't take their money, any more than Boeing took money from the ocean liners. The internet destroyed the model.
Have all Republicans gone crazy? Granting monopolies encourages competition?
House Republicans propose nationwide ban on municipal broadband networks
GOP claims ban would "promote competition by limiting government-run networks."
A handy way to compare the field.
As Power BI aces Gartner's new Magic Quadrant, what's the story behind Microsoft's success?
A new Gartner Magic Quadrant on analytics and business intelligence (BI) is out, and Microsoft is once again in the "Leaders" quadrant. In fact, according to Microsoft, this is its 14th year in a row as a leader in BI. While Microsoft is in virtually the identical spot as it was last year, its closest competitors have actually lost ground. Thoughtspot has fallen into the Visionaries quadrant. Qlik, while it has increased along the "completeness of vision" axis, it has slipped in "ability to execute." Tableau, meanwhile, regressed in both of those dimensions.
Tools. My students seem to do this automatically.
https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-scan-on-iphone/
How to Scan Documents on Your iPhone
You don't need a special scanner app to scan documents with your iPhone anymore. Let's learn how to use the Camera app and scan anything with a click.
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